California Moon

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

1

He couldn’t be drowning.

He was in too much pain to be dying. No, he was very much alive. At least for the present.

His ribs felt as if they’d been cracked in half. His right arm was numb and flopped against his side. His shoulder was white-hot as if branded. He heard accents, maybe Hispanic, difficult to understand. He had no idea what they wanted from him. He didn’t even know where he was or how he’d gotten there. He was shocked to find himself struggling for his own name.

His head throbbed with pain but he tried to stand anyway. Then they grabbed him roughly under the arms and dragged him from the back seat of the car.

Not my car…a rental from the Shreveport airport.

They frisked him and one of the men took his wallet.

“You want money?” he managed to ask.

“Idiot!” one of the men growled as he clumsily shoved the wallet in a jacket pocket. “No identification. No traces,” he explained in thickly accented English.

Anger exploded inside him as the realization hit that he might not come out of this alive—whatever this was. That was the hell of it. He didn’t know these men. In his bewilderment he reasoned that his wallet was vital to staying alive. He lunged toward the man. “Gimme that!”

A fist slammed into his jaw, stunning him, and his assailant continued frisking him.

“Where eezit?”

“What? I don’t have a gun,” he tried to tell them, but his cut, bruised mouth barely moved.

Hands moved down his jeans and back again. He shivered, the fleece lining of his Houston Rockets windbreaker doing nothing to cut the biting wind. He shivered.

One of the men laughed.

What do they want?

Suddenly, his arms were pulled behind his back. A fist sank into his jaw again. Pain screamed through his body as another blow hit his midsection and another. His face was pummeled.

He fell to the ground and struck his head on a rock.

He saw stars, tiny swirling lights, but then they faded.

And he remembered. He wasn’t alone. He’d been with Adam, his best friend.

He could hear the sound of Adam’s frantic pleadings as the assailants turned their attention to him.

“That’s only my wallet. I don’t have it, I tell you.” Adam groaned.

He heard scuffling of feet on gravel and dirt, the sound of fists pounding on muscles. Then he heard a chilling human wail.

“Please don’t kill me. No!”

What are they doing to him? And why? Adam, do what they want.

Adam screamed. The sound was frighteningly high-pitched, as if he couldn’t take any more.

This is insane! Adam, what have you gotten us into?

He tried desperately to focus his eyes. A dense gray mist swirled around everything. Glancing sidelong toward the long, dark structure to his left, he realized they’d brought him to a bridge.

But where? And why?